Fun with the Cow Lady!

Everyone had a great time at our special event last week, making cow puppets with author Carol Weis!

Come Meet the Cow Lady!

This Thursday, in place of our regularly-scheduled afternoon stortytime, a special guest will be visiting the Town Hall. Carol Weis aka The Cow Lady, an author from Western MA, will be here to share her picture book with us at 1:30!

Carol will have copies of her book available for purchase and signing, at the event, and will lead the kids in a related activity after reading the story.

This event is being paid for by a grant from the Circle of Friends Community Partnership for Children. Admission is FREE!

Mark your calendar now ...

Come meet Tillie on May 14th!

Who is Tillie, you ask?

Tillie is a real live hen who stars in her very own picture book, Tillie Lays an Egg. Tillie, along with her owner, Terry Golson, the author of the book, will be visiting the Upton Town Hall on Thursday, May 14th at 2:30. (This special author appearance will be held, instead of our regularly-scheduled afternoon storytime session.)

Copies of Tillie Lays an Egg are currently available for purchase at Kaleidoscope Books, Cards & Gifts and can be brought to this event for Terry to sign. Copies will also be availble to purchase at the event. Following the storytime and booksigning, Terry has offered to stay a while longer to meet with members of the Upton 4-H Club, along with anyone else who may be interested in learning more about keeping backyard chickens!

This event is sponsored by a grant from the Circle of Friends Community Partnership for Children. Admission is Free!

Hibernation ...

At last week's PreSchool StoryTime sessions, we read stories about Bears getting ready for Winter .... and learned about HIBERNATION!

After the stories, the kids made a little craft to take home, using a brown pompom, a cardboard tube and some brown paper: A bear sleeping in his cave!

For some coloring/activity pages that go with one of the books, Bear Snores On, visit the author's website: http://www.karmawilson.com/teachers.htm#bear

The books we read:

• Time to Sleep by Denise Fleming
• Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson
• Old Bear by Kevin Henkes

We will be reading some more books by Kevin Henkes this week, since that author's birthday is later this month ...

Please remember to wear something purple-ish!

Pictures from our Fairy Houses Event: Saturday, September 13, 2008, in the Upton State Forest!

Thank you, Friends of the Upton Town Library, for funding this amazing event! Thank you to Tracy & Barry Kane for bringing the magic of Fairy Houses to Upton!

I met Jane Yolen!!!

As if my surprise birthday celebration at Thursday's storytime wasn't enough excitement for one week, on Friday I had the great pleasure of meeting JANE YOLEN!!! Jane was the keynote speaker at a Massachusetts Library Association conference for youth-services librarians from all across the state, at Tower Hill in Boylston.

Jane Yolen is the author of approximately a gazillion books for readers of all ages and has won LOTS of awards.


She has often been referred to as America's Hans Christian Andersen ...
you can read an interview of her discussing one of her books which honors that beloved author here.

An incredible writer,

she is also a wonderful speaker and it was truly an honor to be in her presence and listen to all she had to say about children's literature.

Favorite Children's Authors

There are so many fabulous children's authors, and we all have our favorites . . . . I will post a few of mine here. Click on their names to visit their websites. Please feel free to add to this list: just click on "comments" below, and I will add your responses here!

Tony Abbott
Avi
Molly Bang
Jan Brett
Margaret Wise Brown
Eric Carle
Sharon Creech
Doreen Cronin
Tomie dePaola (My daughter & I met him in 2000 at a Barnes&Noble!)
Anna Dewdney
Denise Fleming
Mem Fox
Kevin Henkes
Tracy Kane (My daughter & I met her in 2006: Can you find our picture on her website?) Click here to see her 2008 visit to UPTON!
David Kirk
Kathryn Lasky
Daisy Meadows
Laura Numeroff
Mary Pope Osborne
Patricia Polacco (I met her in 1996 at a Children's Literature Festival at Framingham State College)
Ron Roy
Peter Sis
Chris Van Allsburg (I met him in 2005 at a Children's Literature Festival at Framingham State College)
Karma Wilson
Jane Yolen (I met her in March 2007!)